Chapter 73 Peng Dehuai who took care of the overall situation and endured humiliation

Peng Dehuai is one of the main leaders of the Jinggangshan Revolutionary Base. Peng Dehuai did not catch up with the heyday of the Jinggangshan base area. Not long after he led the Fifth Red Army to Jinggangshan, he encountered a serious situation in which the enemy's heavy troops in Hunan and Jiangxi provinces "will suppress" the base area, and the Fourth Red Army had to leave the base area. This was something Peng Dehuai did not expect. He led the Fifth Red Army to Jinggangshan, originally he came with confidence and hope.The banner of Jinggangshan is Peng Dehuai's example.

In order to take such a revolutionary road, Peng Dehuai went through a difficult choice. Peng Dehuai, formerly known as Peng Dehua, was born on October 24, 1898 in a peasant family in Wushi Township, Xiangtan County, Hunan Province.Due to his poor family, he went to the Hunan Army to serve as a soldier before he was 18 years old.During the Great Revolution, he served as company commander, battalion commander, and regiment commander in the National Revolutionary Army.After the failure of the Great Revolution, Peng Dehuai, who was in pain and hesitation, was introduced by Duan Dechang to join the Communist Party of China.

At this time, the revolution was at a low ebb, and the Communist Party was hunted down by the Kuomintang, and the situation was very dangerous.At this time, Peng Dehuai was already the head of the Kuomintang army, with status and money. How much courage does it take to abandon high-ranking officials and generous salaries to start a revolution that may be beheaded at any time? Peng Dehuai has the courage! He not only joined the Communist Party, but also organized and launched the Pingjiang Uprising that shocked China on July 22, 1928, under the leadership of the Party, and created a new Red Army unit, the Fifth Red Army.

After Peng Dehuai led the Fifth Red Army to fight on the border of Hunan, Hubei and Jiangxi for several months, he broke through many obstacles and arrived at Ninggang New City on December 10, and arrived at the Jinggangshan Revolutionary Base. However, before the Fifth Red Army arrived in Jinggangshan, it encountered the third "suppression meeting" of 6 brigades and 18 regiments of enemy troops from Hunan and Jiangxi provinces to the Jinggangshan base area. In order to smash the enemy's offensive and preserve the Red Army, at the joint meeting of the Front Committee of the Fourth Red Army, the Special Committee of the Hunan-Jiangxi Border, the Military Committee of the Fourth and Fifth Red Army, and the county committees held on Ninggangbai Road, it was decided that the Fourth Red Army would go down the mountain. , "surround Wei and save Zhao"; the strategy of the Fifth Red Army staying behind and defending Jinggang.

Peng Dehuai, commander of the Fifth Red Army, is facing another test! The Fifth Red Army stayed behind in Jinggangshan, and had to take great risks, and even had the possibility of annihilation of the entire army.At first, some commanders of the Fifth Red Army did not quite understand this. Peng Dehuai and Teng Daiyuan undertook tremendous pressure to persuade the comrades of the Fifth Red Army to make great sacrifices.Peng Dehuai described the situation at that time in his "Memories of the Past": I accepted this task at that time.However, during the discussion at the Military Commission of the Fifth Red Army, the opinions were inconsistent, and most comrades did not agree that the Fifth Army should stick to Jinggangshan.Their reason is: the Pingjiang Uprising delayed the enemy's "suppression" against Jinggangshan in Hunan and Jiangxi provinces. Now, the main force of the White Army in Hunan and Jiangxi provinces is "suppressing" Jinggangshan and the reactionary forces in the border areas of Hunan, Hubei and Jiangxi have weakened. Part of the Fifth Red Army has completed the task of establishing contact with the Fourth Red Army, so it should quickly return to the north, expand the Hunan, Hubei, and Jiangxi Soviet base areas, and convey the resolutions of the Sixth Congress. Should assume the task of defending Jinggangshan.Although the terrain of Jinggang Mountain is dangerous, it is about two to three hundred miles around, and the ammunition shortage and the number of troops are small, so it cannot be defended.However, Comrade Dai Yuan and I resolutely implemented the decision of the Front Committee of the Fourth Army in order to take the overall situation into consideration and prepare for necessary sacrifices.

Peng Dehuai took on the heavy responsibility of guarding the mountain with the broad mind of a Communist Party member and taking the overall situation into consideration. Sure enough, it was a hard and fierce battle with great sacrifices.Peng Dehuai led the Fifth Red Army to fight bloody battles for three days and nights, repelling the enemy's attacks again and again.But in the end due to being outnumbered, the Jinggangshan base was lost. For Peng Dehuai, this is a painful thing.After all, the Jinggangshan base area was lost in his hands, even though he had foreseen this when he accepted the task of staying in the Jinggangshan base area; even though it might still be the same result if someone else was replaced; Jinggangshan made self-criticism.

But Peng Dehuai did not lose confidence because of this. He always remembered what Comrade Zhu De said at the meeting of the Fourth Red Army and the Fifth Red Army. It was at the beginning of the division meeting that the temporary rostrum of the meeting suddenly collapsed. Some people turned pale with shock: "Oh, this is not auspicious! The platform collapsed just after meeting today." Commander Zhu De said to everyone with a calm expression: "It doesn't matter, the platform can be built again if it collapses. The platform of the proletariat will never collapse!"

"If the platform is broken, you can build it again", this sentence was deeply imprinted in Peng Dehuai's mind. As a result, Peng Dehuai led the main force of the Fifth Red Army to break through successfully, keeping the spark of the revolution; a few months later, he led his troops back to Jinggangshan, and contributed to the restoration of the armed separatist regime on the Hunan-Jiangxi border. However, Peng Dehuai also made a mistake that was an irreparable loss to the Jinggangshan base area, that is, he listened to partial belief and sent troops to kill Yuan Wencai and Wang Zuo by mistake.

This is something that Peng Dehuai has been heartbroken. In February 1930, under the influence of the erroneous line of "Left" blind activism, due to the intensified contradictions between the Hunan-Jiangxi border soil and the Hakka revolutionaries, the Hunan-Jiangxi Border Special Committee made the mistake of killing Yuan Wencai and Wang Zuo Decide. The Hunan-Jiangxi Border Special Committee will use the power of Peng Dehuai's Fifth Red Army to implement this decision. Zhu Changxi and Wang Huai, the heads of the special committee, made a special trip to report to Peng Dehuai, and also brought a personal letter from the central inspector.

Peng Dehuai is in trouble!Although he didn't know Yuan Wencai and Wang Zuo well, judging from the performance of Wang Zuo leading his troops to fight guerrillas with the Fifth Red Army on the border of Hunan, Hubei and Jiangxi, he did not believe that Yuan and Wang would rebel.However, now there is an instruction letter from the central inspector and a request from the local party organization, it is unreasonable not to send troops. Therefore, Peng Dehuai convened an interim meeting of the Military Commission to discuss, and without having time to verify the authenticity of the special committee's report and ask his superiors for instructions, he made a decision to send troops out of consideration for protecting the interests of the revolution.

A tragedy that should not have happened happened. When all the truth came to light, Peng Dehuai was very annoyed."We also have a responsibility to listen to credulous people," he later admitted. Peng Dehuai did not make the same mistake again after learning from a pitfall.On the contrary, in the complicated struggles, he calmly analyzed and correctly dealt with an incident that might lead to the split of Zhu Mao's Red Army, and contributed to the growth of the Red Army born in Jinggangshan. It was the winter of 1930 after the Fourth Red Army left the Jinggangshan base and established the Central Revolutionary Base.At the critical moment when the Red Army on the one hand was fully committed to the first anti-"encirclement and suppression" struggle, due to the influence of the "Left" opportunist line, the AB regiment in the Soviet area was suppressed, which led to the Tomita Incident in the Red Army.The mutineers played the separatist banner of "Down with Mao Zedong and support Zhu Penghuang". When Peng Dehuai was perplexed by this matter, he suddenly received a secret letter that looked like it was written by Mao Zedong.Looking at the content, it was shocking. It wrote that members of the AB regiment in the Red Army should be forced to recruit Zhu De, Peng Dehuai, Huang Gonglue, and Teng Daiyuan as the main criminals of the AB regiment, "in order to catch and kill them as soon as possible." At this time, if Zhu De and Peng Dehuai are not calm, believe this letter and take action, it will inevitably cause a big split in Zhu Mao's Red Army. Peng Dehuai was not fooled, he keenly discovered the doubts in the letter, and decided that Mao Zedong would never write such a letter or do such a thing. A few years later, he described his analysis at that time in "Reminiscences of the Past": At that time, I recalled in my mind that Comrade Mao Zedong built the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army, built the Jinggangshan base area, conveyed the six major resolutions, and won the alliance between Yuan and Wang. Seriously criticizing the random killing of two people; self-criticism about the fact that the Five Armies should not be left to defend Jinggangshan at that time; especially the resolution of the Gutian meeting, all these are correct guidelines, policies and statesmanship.Mao Zedong was by no means a conspirator, but a proletarian politician.This letter is a forgery, which is a sinister plot to split the Red Army and split the party. After Peng Dehuai exposed the conspiracy of false letters, he immediately convened an emergency meeting of the main leaders of the Red Army, and drafted a declaration. Under the leadership of the General Committee, unite as one, support Comrade Mao Zedong, and support the leadership of the General Front Committee! Peng Dehuai maintained the unity and unity of Zhu Mao's Red Army at the critical moment. Since the Jinggangshan struggle period, Peng Dehuai has been one of the main leaders of the People's Army. He has been galloping across the battlefield for a long time.During the Agrarian Revolutionary War, he served as the commander of the Red Army; during the Anti-Japanese War, he served as the deputy commander-in-chief of the Eighth Route Army; during the War of Liberation, he served as the commander of the Northwest Liberation Army.After the liberation of the whole country, he served as Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission of the Communist Party of China, Vice Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Commission of the Central People's Government, Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Chinese People's Liberation Army, Commander and Political Commissar of the Chinese People's Volunteers, Vice Premier of the State Council and Minister of Defense. In 1955, Peng Dehuai was awarded the rank of Marshal of the People's Republic of China.